The first one I received was Razer’s BlackWidow Ultimate. The feeling of typing on this was very strange at first, but it felt amazing at the same time. It gave me this feeling of having to type faster, and this gave me a momentum not found on your standard keyboard. It only took about a week or so to have touch typing nearly mastered, and I was typing a lot faster too. This was more to do with the fact that it was a mechanical keyboard, rather than using a Razer over a different brand. So let’s see what Razer has brought to the table here.

When compared to other mechanical keyboards on the market today, the BlackWidow Ultimate looks like the mix between the standard light up gaming keyboards and plain looking mechanical keyboards. Unlike nearly all other mechanical keyboards, this one has full backlighting, a USB port on it’s side, audio jacks for your headset, a set of macro keys and it uses software to configure some of those features. I knew for myself that I was a little worried about losing my dear backlighting and macros, and I know a lot of other gamers would be too. Razer has nicely implemented these features and it’s like using one of their other gaming keyboards, but with mechanical switches. The only problem I found with having a USB port and two audio jacks on the side was the extra cable clutter. Razer has a extra cables for each additional port, and they’re big and thick. This could’ve been condensed into one USB cable for a total of two cables coming off the keyboard. It’s not a huge problem, but it bugged me since I didn’t ever use those extra ports.

Now, the actual build quality of this actually surprised me. When I saw it was glossy, had Razer’s infamous horrid rubber coating on the keys and the pricing is rather cheap compared to the likes of Filco, Das and Deck Keyboards, I thought it was going to be rather bad. But I was wrong. With the glossy finish I assumed it’d be cheap and flimsy like you find with most cheap LCD monitors these days, but the BlackWidow Ultimate feels nice and heavy like all mechanical keyboards. It feels solid, and best of all, it doesn’t creek like most plastic things, especially glossy plastic things. I haven’t seen any wear on the rubber coating yet, although if it ever does happen, it will only happen after a reasonable amount time. So I can’t really comment on that, and it won’t be getting any points off for it, so it’s just something to keep in mind. As for the pricing, the quality feels really good for the price, so it’s confusing me why its price is so damn cheap, but I won’t complain of course. The actual switches used in the Ultimate version of the BlackWidow are the Cherry MX Blue switches, so there won’t be any variant of quality compared to other mech keyboards in that case. The only problem that I found was with the review unit I received, the period key’s LED for backlighting had shorted out. This was very disappointing to see after I was so surprised with the amazing build quality.

From Razer as a brand, this has to be the best product I used of there’s. The above mentioned problem with the LED was no biggie as I asked them what would of happened if I had I bought this keyboard, all that I would have had to do is send it back with a proof of purchase and a replacement would be sent with no hassles. I done a little research on it also, and this problem doesn’t look very widespread at all, which is good. I also have a couple of friends with this exact same keyboard, both have had no problems what-so-ever with it and absolutely love the thing.